Credits: Reuters/Carlos Barria/AP/Alex Castro.
Last week's 3-day visit by U. S. President Barack Obama to Cuba and this week's 1,500-word response by 89-year-old Cuban legend Fidel Castro has served to shed light on the Cuban Revolution and the efforts of the United States since 1959 to overthrow it. Here, in my view, are the most pertinent comments.
Everything, in essence, revolves around this statement last week on Cuban soil by President Obama: "Cuba does not need to fear a threat from the United States." Cubans sincerely hope to believe it but, also, this presumably is the very statement that most infuriated thuggish right-wing Americans such as presidential contender Ted Cruz, television pundit Ana Navarro and newspaper columnist Cal Thomas.
Fidel Castro, from his cozy living room in Havana, penned a 1,500-word reply to Obama's visit and the Fidel sentence that garnered the most international headlines was: "We do not need the empire to give us any presents." As he approaches his 90th birthday on August 13th, the U. S. media mocked and distorted Castro's words.
But the U. S. media, since the 1950s, has routinely mocked and distorted Fidel Castro, such as with this 2006 hospital photo when the big news, as represented by this photo, was that Fidel had miraculously survived a near-fatal intestinal disorder that felled him in July of 2006. Take special note that in the photo Fidel was holding up that day's edition of the Granma newspaper to simply prove he was alive, dispelling other anti-Cuba reports.
But, typically, the U. S. doctored the photo to put a medical hat on Fidel's head, distort his mouth, and show him holding a sexy nurse instead of the newspaper he was actually holding. In other words, since 1959 the main-stream U. S. media has distorted Revolutionary Cuba to comport with America's distorted Cuban policy.
For a couple of decades, Fernando Ravsberg has provided highly respected coverage of Cuba, with his articles originating on his blog Cartas Desde Cuba {Letters from Cuba} and then often republished internationally. This week's riveting Ravsberg article was entitled: "Cuba Faces New Challenges In An Old Conflict." His first paragraph was: "Obama should be gratified for Cuba's hospitality: no journalist asked him any difficult questions and no one engaged him on the subject of the embargo, the Guantanamo Naval Base, the prisoners kept there without trials, financing given the island's opposition or the propaganda spread by Marti Radio and TV."
Cardinal Jaime Ortega is Cuba's very influential religious leader and he is the man who spearheaded the large role Pope Francis played in trying to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States. Cardinal Ortega was merely lukewarm to President Obama's visit to the island, saying this week that he is willing to forgive America's hostilities towards the Cuban people but that he "refuses to forget." Cardinal Ortega added: "You don't turn the page and you don't put history behind you because history is necessary and history is the very essence of life."
But America's truest democracy-lovers -- such as Sarah Stephens, Founder of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas -- will actually tell you the truth even if the subject is Cuba! Ms. Stephens, Washington's top expert on U.S.-Cuban relations, said this about President Obama's trip to Cuba: "On Tuesday, President Obama delivered a breathtaking speech to the Cuban people. It was a speech only he could deliver, with powerful words spoken from his unique perspective as America's first African-American president, and true to his devotion to a new diplomacy that reflects our ideals and the realities of the post-Cold War world." Now please, if you will, contrast those sane and decent words from Sarah Stephens with the garbage the mainstream U. S. media stresses from self-serving right-wing thugs such as newspaper columnist Cal Thomas, presidential contender Ted Cruz, and television pundit Ana Navarro. The contrast, I think you will agree, is striking.
This photo defines the right-wing gutlessness of the mainstream U. S. media when it comes to anti-Cuban propaganda. Second from the left is Barbara Lee, a member of the U. S. Congress from California. She is shown with three American doctors, all educated totally free of charge courtesy of the Cuban government at its famed Latin American School of Medicine, which routinely accepts poor students from the region, including the United States of America. Cuba only asks that, after graduating, they return to the poor areas from whence they came, to administer to poor patients for at least five years. Congresswoman Lee says, "President Obama's trip to Cuba demonstrated that many of us have the courage to make decent decisions regarding the island of Cuba and its eleven million innocent people who do not deserve another half-century of revengeful punishment because their government chased some Mafia-types to America in 1959." Yet, the mainstream U. S. media will never show you such comments from the likes of Congresswoman Lee because it is more politically correct to stress the anti-Cuban venom of members of the U. S. Congress such as Ros-Lehtinen, Cruz, Rubio, Diaz-Balart, Menendez, etc., etc.
Another great American lady, Gail Reed, issued the above comment related to President Obama's trip to Cuba. Ms. Reed is one of America's greatest medical experts and she is fighting to end the U. S. embargo against Cuba so, for one thing, Americans suffering from cancer and diabetes can benefit from proven vaccines Cuban scientists have discovered and made available to other nations, including free-of-charge for poor patients. Yet, the mainstream U. S. media has neither the guts nor the integrity to present Ms. Reed's side of the two-sided equation while readily promoting the propaganda of right-wingers in the U. S. Congress who insist on not loosening the tentacles of the embargo even enough to help Americans suffering from cancer and diabetes. {Top U. S. cancer clinics are begging for a Cuban cancer drug that has been proven effective against throat cancer, and top U. S. diabetic institutions are begging for a Cuban drug that has been proven to prevent amputations}.
As far as the mainstream U. S. media is concerned, Gail Reed doesn't exist but any right-wing thug or pundit that wants to promote the continuation of the embargo against Cuba is afforded ready access to unleash their anti-Cuban propaganda.
In my opinion Ben Norton, the journalist for Salon, had this week's best summation of Mr. Obama's visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro's reaction to that historic event. Norton based his astute report on historical references, which included putting his readers in contact with pertinent and actual declassified American documents. Thus the title of Norton's essay is: "The U. S. Has Terrorized Cuba For Over 50 Years -- Fidel Is Right To Be Wary Of Obama's Claims." Norton concluded, "Cuba and the Castros are frequently demonized in the U. S., but the actual history of American policy in the country is rarely discussed." After documenting "murder, terror, chemicals to incapacitate sugar workers," etc., against Cuba, Norton adds, "Today against the will of 99 percent of the international community, the U. S. still maintains a strict embargo on Cuba. Since the 1959 Cuban Revolution the U. S. has invaded Cuba, tried assassinations, imposed an embargo, and harbored terrorists."
Ben Norton's best work was using his article to direct the readers to indisputable documentations, such as a U. S. government historical site that lists the actual document dated April 6, 1960 entitled "The Decline and Fall of Castro." It was written by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Malloy. In that document, Malloy admitted that "the majority of Cubans support Castro" and he said "there is no effective political opposition." Therefore, as a precursor to the 1962 embargo, Malloy concluded that: "The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction." Ben Norton also takes you directly to a November 12, 1978 seminal article in The New York Times by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian Garry Willis. In that article Willis detailed the "campaign of terror and sabotage directed against Castro." Ben Norton also referenced Operation Mongoose, the code name for the bloody, no-holds-barred attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro during the John Kennedy administration.
Aviva Chomsky is a respected Cuban expert and the author of books such as "The Cuba Reader." In a long Q & A session with journalist Janine Jackson this week, Aviva Chomsky had insightful comments on Obama's visit to Cuba, such as:
"We have never ignored Cuba. Cuba has always been a policy priority for the United States, since the mid-1800s. We have invaded Cuba about a dozen times, starting for the first time in 1898 and then multiple times after that, with the most recent actual military invasion being in 1961. But even with no actual invasion of Cuba since the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the United States has pursued, by every means possible, the goal of overthrowing Cuba's government -- legal and illegal, covert and overt, violent and nonviolent. We have never paused in that."
Ali Velshi is still the most respected broadcast journalist regarding delicate economic issues -- first for many years at CNN and now at Aljazeera America. On March 30th he hosted an informative half-hour update entitled "A New Cuba." One of his segments was entitled "Anti-Castro Industry" that he introduced with this pertinent question: "U. S. and Cuba are mending ways so why are U. S. taxpayers still pumping tens of millions of dollars to anti-Castro programs in Miami?" It's such a sane but dangerous question that it is surprising that even Ali Velshi asked it. But he answered it appropriately, pointing out that the Castro Cottage Industry centered in Miami is so embedded in the U. S. Congress that cutting off the spigot is impossible. Velshi, of course, highlighted the Radio-TV Marti boondoggle that, from 1983 till today, has siphoned off steady pipelines of Washington-to-Miami dollars. Velshi's reporter in Cuba, of course, couldn't find any Cuban that has heard the Radio-TV Marti anti-Castro propaganda that is the excuse the U. S. government gives taxpayers. Velshi's reporter also pointed out the personal luxuries that much of that supposedly anti-Cuban money has been used for in Miami. And Velshi's "A New Cuba" program told how Bacardi, the rum-maker that fled the Cuban Revolution, has made billions by, for one thing, fending off Cuba's prized rum Havana Club. Velshi said that Bacardi, an anti-Castro stalwart, only had to spend $3 million to buy off enough for-sale U. S. Congress members to get laws enacted favoring Bacardi over Havana Club, which Cuba sells outside of the U. S. in conjunction with a major French beverage company. Velshi wondered how much longer American taxpayers will fund anti-Castro projects that, he said, range from "the frivolous to the absurd." He mentioned a huge pile of tax dollars, for example, that recently flowed from Washington to Miami to fund Cuban rappers and encourage them to write, sing and publish anti-Castro rap songs. Ali Velshi seemed to conclude that...overthrowing the Castros is not why the money pipeline continues but the control the Castro Cottage Industry has on the U. S. Congress will keep the spigot wide open because too many benefactors have gotten accustomed to what Velshi called "streams of tax dollars."
Elaine Diaz is a mainstream Cuban journalist who received a prestigious Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. She recently wrote, "Tomorrow Cuba will still be Cuba, not because we received an American president on our soil, which is great, but because it makes our world more of a nuanced one. Mr. Obama, unlike some in the U. S., understands that Cubans on the island must determine our future, not benefactors in the U. S. We Cubans need America as a friend, not an enemy. The problem about restoring relations is that too many rich Americans have benefited too much for too long from U. S. hostility towards Cuba."
Non-dissident Cuban journalists like Eliane Diaz are ignored by the American media that makes superstars out of dissident journalists and other dissidents.
Elaine Diaz, superb young Cuban journalist.
Cristina Escobar, Cuba's awesomely talented television news anchor and, at age 28, the leader of the twenty-something generation of Cubans likely to predicate Cuba's future, says, "I don't want the United States to bring me democracy. That is a project for Cubans on the island, not rich politicians and business people in the United States. Great Cubans died on our soil fighting for independence that we finally attained in 1959. The blood that Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo and so many others shed inspires me to treasure sovereignty as much as they did. I'm Cuban, just like them."
Josefina Vidal is the dedicated Cuban that deals with U. S. relations on a daily basis. Back when two anti-Castro zealots -- Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz -- were leading Republican Cuban-American presidential contenders, Ms. Vidal astutely opined, "The Batistianos have a new plan to recapture Cuba. They now plan to capture the White House first and then recapture Cuba." Yet, Ms. Vidal welcomed President Obama to Cuba and she welcomes the opportunity to negotiate sane relations with the United States. The photo above, complete with the attached quotation, occurred when Ms. Vidal addressed a news conference in Washington after her 4th and final diplomatic session with her U. S. counterpart Roberta Jacobson. The quotation, translated to English, said: "We come with a constructive spirit, trying to find common ground between the parties." She is still seeking that very elusive "common ground."
It is now apparent that A new era in U.S.-Cuba relations is possible. But for that to happen, decent Cubans like Josefina Vidal and decent Americans like President Obama must be allowed to negotiate that sane criteria, which the entire world expects from the U. S. democracy. But the cold, hard facts of life are these: Too many right-wing thugs for too long have benefited from insane hostility against the nearby island. Therefore, the odds against Ms. Vidal and Mr. Obama remain prohibitive.
And now a great photo:
A Double Rainbow.
Photo credit: Michael Lange/Pinterest/Tumblr.
A BBC photo taken in Trinidad, Cuba.
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